Firstly, the aforementioned "boyfriend" is Brian Gregory May, he is positively wonderful and has been for the past 16 months. Don't be fooled by my fuming rant; after all this time, he still makes me blush.In other news: I interviewed for my dream job just yesterday at the St. Louis Public Library for the position of Young Adult Services Provider. This is the first interview for a job which I feel I'm not "throwing myself" at. I'm fully qualified and entirely enthused.
In the words of my good friend, John: "Hang on to that feeling. Even if it doesn't work out, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and you should be proud." I am very proud of myself, but I have a funny feeling that gaining full-time employment would feel even better.
Recap of my day: 1. Get called this morning at 7:48am to be told that they don't need me at work today. Still have to go to work to pick up a hair clip that was made for me by a co-worker to wear at a wedding this upcoming Sunday. 2. Wake up at approximately 10am, make breakfast. 3. Discover that my phone will not allow me to receive or send text messages. 4. Get call from sister at noon asking about aforementioned phone issue. Asks if I want to accompany her to the Art Museum. I agree to go if she will run by my work. 5. Go to Art Museum with sister, get slightly lost. Good times are had. 6. Drive by work to pick up hair clip. Creator originally said she would make item for free. Now is asking for $10 and writes so on the box. 7. Pick up take-out with sister, eat at home while watching the Discovery Channel. 8. Try out wedding ensemble, feel really good in it. 9. Mom comes home from work, doesn't complain. Great. 10. Get ready to leave for a showcase at UMSL in which my boyfriend is playing. 11. Get to the Shrewsbury MetroLink Station a little after 6pm. 12. Purchase ticket, train leaves as I am doing so. 13. Have to wait for the next train for 40 minutes because of "minor delays", it's cold. 14. Finally leave at 6:40, worry if I will make it in time or not to see showcase. 15. Transfer from Blue Line to Red Line. 16. Arrive at UMSL North Station at 7:20pm. Unsure of where the Student Center is on campus. 17. Find the Student Center, do not know where the showcase is being held. 18. Find the showcase which has barely just begun. Relieved. 19. Boyfriend approaches upset because he thought I might have been hurt when the reality was that I was unable to tell him that I had arrived. Note: See phone problems. 20. Boyfriend sits with me for 2 acts after he performs and then disappears for the rest of the showcase. 21. Boyfriend invites me to sit with them once he returns an hour later. 22. Boyfriend and friends are drinking mixed drinks which, I assume, were poured when they "disappeared". 23. Showcase ends. 24. Drop off bassist at his house around 10pm. I sit in car to stay warm while they talk outside. Listen to some choral music. 25. Decide that we do not wish to go to a party tonight, but I do want to spend more time with my boyfriend. 26. Cannot go to boyfriend's house because boyfriend is incapacitated. 27. Call friends to see if they are still at a planned get-together in South St. Louis. Discover that they are not hanging out in South St. Louis, but are in Fenton instead. Was not informed. 28. Get dropped off at house at 11pm, feeling somewhat disappointed in how the evening has turned out. 29. Say so to boyfriend, keeps driver for 30 minutes because of having to repeat myself and explain that it's okay. 30. Currently eating chocolate chip cookies with a cold glass of milk.
120 applications, 2 failed job interviews and 5 months of part-time employment has me nauseous with uncertainty. Hence, I finally decided to bite the "I-already-have-so-much-money-in-loans" bullet and plan to enroll in graduate school to become what I have always wanted to be: a Librarian. Here goes everything.
Here's to the authors who wrote the truth so eloquently that someone, somewhere was afraid that others would become enlightened too. I fully intend on reading every work; ">" indicates that I have done so already. I have some catching up to do.
Top 100 Banned Books in America: > 1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald > 2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck > 4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee > 5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker 6. Ulysses by James Joyce 7. Beloved by Toni Morrison > 8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding 9. 1984 by George Orwell > 10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov > 12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck > 13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White 14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce > 15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley > 17. Animal Farm by George Orwell > 18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway > 19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway 21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne 23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston > 24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison 26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 27. Native Son by Richard Wright 28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey 29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut 30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway 31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac 32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London > 34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James 36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin 37. The World According to Garp by John Irving 38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren > 39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster 40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien 41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally 42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand 44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce 45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair 46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf > 47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum 48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence 49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess > 50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin 51. My Antonia by Willa Cather 52. Howards End by E. M. Forster 53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote 54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger 55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie 56. Jazz by Toni Morrison 57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron 58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner 59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster > 60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton > 61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor 62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald 63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf 64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence 65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe 66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut 67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles 68. Light in August by William Faulkner 69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James 70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs 74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh 75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence 76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe 77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway 78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein 79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett 80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer 81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys 82. White Noise by Don DeLillo 83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather 84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller 85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells 86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad 87. The Bostonians by Henry James 88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser 89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather 90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame 91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald 92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand 93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles 94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis 95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling 96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald 97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike 98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster 99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis 100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
My Grandpa has a cardboard box of memories-- pictures of my beautiful Grandma throughout her life. It became apparent a year ago that, while he was far more susceptible to the disease, she was showing signs of Alzheimer's. Miraculously, she still remembers our names and our memories. She has been on hospice for the past 3 weeks. Grandma has stopped eating, Grandpa can't stop crying.
My family invited him to dinner tonight. We talked about memories at their old house on Robert Ave., the hobbies that he wants to start up again, the hundreds of bells she collected that we plan to give away at her funeral so that everyone can have something to remember her by. Right before he left, he said,, "I know she's still here, but I still miss her everyday and I still hug my pillow every night. I just hope she feels the same."
Finally home and semi-rested from the 23 hour ride back from Wyoming. Simply readjusting to the amenities of having easy access to food, light that isn't hand-held and a place to sleep more than a blue foam pad's worth above the ground.
After weeks of planning, a day of grocery shopping and a night of miraculously packing everything into the car, I finally find myself sitting on a couch with less than 5 hours before we take off for the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming. Contentment at its best.
In other news:
